![]() “Many of the early organizers got discouraged and walked away,” said Rick August, one of the station’s founders and a former host and programmer. The station went on air in 2001, but only after years of planning, raising money and dealing with one existential crisis after another. Kuzenko played a key role in the founding of the city’s CJTR-FM and was an on-air presence as well. “I continued to look after his books, though,” Mr. Kuzenko acquiring sole ownership of what was by that time X-Ray Records. The two partners eventually split amicably, with Mr. “We want to expose Reginans to this exciting type of music.” Kuzenko told the Regina Leader-Post in 1987. “We will be playing a lot of this unique music in the store,” Mr. The store emphasized alternative music and artists not always signed to major labels. Spizziri (who owned the Record on Wheels shop in Saskatoon). Kuzenko opened the Regina franchise of the Ontario-based Record on Wheels with Mr. “Dave told me he didn’t care if he sold shoes during the day, just as long as he could play his records at night,” his friend and business partner Ron Spizziri said. During the evening, DJs were freer to veer from the playlist hits in favour of programming their own music. His career in music began in Saskatoon in the early 1980s, first as a disc jockey at the University of Saskatchewan’s radio station and then as a nighttime jock with commercial station CFMC-FM. He survived not by simply peddling records, but by recognizing that a local record shop was an escape and a needed hangout – a funky library for the music soul.Īfter high school, he moved to Saskatchewan for a technician job with the Amok Mining Company. Kuzenko opened his store at the dawn of the digital age and had outlasted compact discs to take part in the current vinyl renaissance, all the while moving X-Ray Records to different Regina locations as required. “It was pivotal to Regina ever having a punk rock scene or a metal scene,” said Skip Taylor, performing arts co-ordinator for the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils. Kuzenko fostered a community, his store a safe harbour for underground music in particular. “If you wanted to know what was going on, you looked at that window,” Mr. In the pre-Internet age, his storefront window was a message board full of flyers for local gigs. In addition to selling music, he offered concert tickets, posters, T-shirts and hard-to-find British magazines such as Kerrang!, the bible of metal music. Kuzenko went independent and changed the name of the store to X-Ray Records in the 1990s. Kuzenko for an album by the British pop band the Smiths, only to be handed a record by the American hardcore punk band Minor Threat instead.ĭave Kuzenko, left, and former employee and long-time friend Derek Petrovitch. Todd Kowalski, bassist with the Canadian punk band Propagandhi, was 14 years old when he asked Mr. “If you wanted something he would go the extra mile to get it.” Petrovitch, who even sports a tattoo of Mr. “He was friendly and open, and made a point of finding records for people,” said Mr. His first customer was 15-year-old Derek Petrovitch, who became an employee of the store as well as a lifelong friend of the owner. He began what his family called his “dream career” in 1987, when he opened an outlet of the Records on Wheels chain at the Scarth Street Mall in downtown Regina. “You’re more involved when you’re listening to records than you are just kind of banging out stuff on your computer or your phone or whatever.” Kuzenko told a CBC Radio interviewer in 2017. “They’re fun to look at, they’re fun to play, they have a different sound than we always hear from the CD sound,” Mr.
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